In the morphological description of nouns, such a feature as animateness/inanimateness is very interesting. Which of these groups do the nouns deposit, photocopy, legislation, liberal, high school girl, opposition, regiment, robot, detective belong to? When deciding this question, it is necessary to rely on the fact that animateness/inanimateness is a lexical and grammatical category of a part of speech, that is, a morphological sign, not a biological one, which means that it is necessary to focus primarily on grammatical indicators, taking into account the semantics of the noun. From this it is clear that animateness/inanimateness may or may not coincide with the division into living and inanimate that exists in nature.

A striking grammatical indicator in this case is the coincidence of the forms of the accusative case of a noun with the forms of the genitive or nominative case in the plural (for masculine nouns - and in the singular). Animate nouns have the same forms of the accusative and genitive cases (let's denote this with the formula V.-R.), for example: I see (who? what?) newspapermen, relatives, children, walruses, dragonflies; no (who? what?) newspapermen, relatives, children, walruses, dragonflies. For inanimate nouns, the accusative case coincides with the nominative (V.-Im.): I see (whom? what?) indices, stocks, and commonwealths; this is (who? what?) indexes, stocks, and commonwealths.

The semantic attribute of animate nouns is the names of people, animals, and insects (see nouns of the first group), and inanimate nouns are the names of all other objects (see, for example, nouns of the second group).

Based on these signs, it can be established that the nouns deposit, photocopy, legislation are inanimate, since V.-Im.: I see (whom? what?) deposits, photocopies, legislation; this is (who? what?) deposits, photocopies, legislation, and they don't identify people, animals, or insects. Nouns liberal, high school girl - animated, as V.-R.: I see (who? what?) liberals, ginazistok; no (who? what?) the liberals,

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high school girls, and they represent people. But these are fairly transparent cases.

The question of nouns like opposition, regiment, robot, detective is more difficult to solve. The opposition and the regiment denote various associations of people, and-we emphasize! - associations, not names. Checking grammatical indicators: meet (who? what?) oppositions, shelves; this (who? what?) opposition, polki - V.-Im. Hence, these nouns refer to the inanimate. The robot denotes an inanimate object, but the accusative case of this noun coincides with the genitive: I see (who? what?) robots', no (who? what?) robots, so robot is an animate noun.

When determining animateness/inanimateness, it is necessary to take into account the polysemy of words. So, the noun detective has two meanings, in each of which it will be defined differently. Detective in the meaning of "detective" is an animated noun (V.-R.: meet detectives, there are no detectives', it serves as the name of a person). Detective in the sense of "a literary work or movie, the plot of which is based on the investigation of a crime" (Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language: In 20 volumes. Moscow, 1993. Vol. IV. P. 20) - an inanimate noun (V.-Im.: read detectives, these are detectives; it is not a title human, animal, or insect).

The category of animate should also include nouns used in a figurative sense, used to characterize - usually negative-persons: hat, nightstand, oak, mattress, since V.-R.: What can you teach these nightstands\1 Just not to meet these nightstands\

On the other hand, nouns denoting inanimate objects, even when naming inanimate objects, can retain their belonging to animate ones, or they can also pass into the category of inanimate ones (V.-R. and V.-Im.: shoot down fighters and fighters, there are no fighters, these are fighters; detect bombers and bombers, there are no bombers, these are bombers. The same will be observed in the singular).

But the nouns dead man, dead man, and corpse belong to different groups, despite some similarity in their semantics-the designation of an inanimate person: grammatical characteristics indicate that the dead man and the dead man are animate nouns (V. - R.: I see the dead, the dead, there are no dead, the dead), and the corpse is inanimate (V.-R.: I see the dead, the dead, there are no dead, the dead).Im.: I see corpses, they are corpses).

Grammatical signs (V.-R.) require that nouns used in some games are considered animated, for example,.

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in cards, chess: jack, ace, queen, pawn (take aces, queens, no aces, queens).

The characteristic of nouns - names of microorganisms is peculiar: virus, microbe, bacillus, infusoria. As noted in the latest academic grammar, they "tend to be used as inanimate"; of the possible combinations to observe, study bacteria, viruses, microbes and observe, study bacteria, viruses, microbes, the latter are regarded as more preferable (Russian Grammar: In 2 volumes, Moscow, 1980. Vol. 1.? IZO). Researchers explain this fluctuation in the definition of animateness / inanimateness by the fact that the belonging of such objects "to animals or plants may not seem obvious" (Eskova N. A. Short Dictionary of difficulties of the Russian language. Grammatical forms. Udarenie [Stress], Moscow, 1994, p. 394).

This includes the names of those living things that are perceived primarily as food: shrimp, oysters, etc.: there are mussels and mussels.

So, when determining the animateness/inanimateness of nouns, we must take into account the following. 1.1. Grammatical features:

V.-R. in animate nouns and V.-Im. in inanimate nouns. 1.2. Lexical meaning of the analyzed words: designation of people, animals, insects by animate nouns and other objects by inanimate ones. 2. Polysemy: nouns with different meanings can belong to different categories. 3. The possibility of fluctuations in the attribution of nouns to animate or inanimate.

In conclusion, we offer an exercise. Determine whether the nouns listed below are animate or inanimate. Make phrases or sentences with them, using them in the nominative, genitive, and accusative cases.

Catalog, antivirus (a program that detects the presence of a virus in the computer's memory and neutralizes its effect), language, migrant, soul, parliament, apparatchik, collective, bill of exchange, bachelor, talent, generation, investor, guide, name, image, ideal, star, peasantry, fist, pack, creature, snake, doll, face.

Murmansk

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